It’s Friday! That means we’re linking up with You Signed Up For What, Mar On The Run and Eat Pray Run DC again for the Friday Five! This week’s topic is Five Ways to Organize Your Running Gear! One of us is slightly OCD SO this should be a fun topic. And we’re off!

1. Keep it Together: I find it easiest to keep the majority of my gear in one place. I have one drawer in my dresser and one section of hanging space in our closet dedicated to running gear. Bottoms and socks go in the drawer and all of my tops get hung in the closet.

2. Bins: I keep all of the smaller gear that I use on a regular basis in bins on the shelf above my running tops in the closet. The bins are divided into sections so it makes it easy for each item to have a home and still easy to see. When I’m finished running the items go back into the bins so nothing gets misplaced. In one bin I keep things like my Garmin & chest strap, iPod, Road ID and ear buds. In the second bin is the majority of my fueling items like Nuun and Shot Bloks (I may or may not have a small obsession with Nuun ;))

3. Save Space by Storing Out of Season Gear: If you’re short on space an easy way to store gear that you’re not going to be using is to use space bags. Fill up a bag with your gear, suck the air out and you’re good to go until you need it again!

4. Keep Track of Mileage: With both of us being runners we go through shoes pretty quickly and it’s easy for them to start piling up. We don’t have a ton of extra storage in our home so we try to keep the amount of extra pairs floating around to a minimum. Garmin connect has a feature to keep track of mileage on your shoes so you know when it’s time for a new pair. We try to stay in the habit of repurposing older shoes for different things. So our oldest pair of shoes get kept for yard work, newer shoes get worn for other types of working out or daily wear. As the shoes get rotated pairs eventually get donated.

5. Race Shirts: We’ve amassed quite the collection of race shirts over the last couple of years. We decided that we are going to keep our favorites and make a quilt out of them. We still wear our favorites for a while after the race but as new ones come in we’re stashing them in a space bag to save for when we have enough to make the quilt. I think it’ll be a cool way to display our accomplishments! Shirts we get from races that are too big or aren’t something we would wear out on a normal basis are fun to repurpose into a workout tank that takes minimal time to make!